Dungeons & Dragons marks 30th anniversary

Page Tools

Thousands of Dungeons & Dragons players gathered in game
stores around the US on Saturday to celebrate the 30th anniversary
of the grandfather of fantasy role-playing games - a pop culture
phenomenon that has influenced a myriad of video games, books and
movies.

An estimated 25,000 fans in 1200 stores celebrated the
anniversary today, said Charles Ryan, brand manager for
role-playing games at Wizards of the Coast, a Renton, Washington
company that owns Dungeons & Dragons.

Shaunnon Drake was at Batty's Best Comics & Games in
Atlanta, Georgia, where gamers, ranging in age from their early
teens to mid-30s, munched pizza and played D&D through the
afternoon. Some said they spend three or more nights a week
playing.

"The game allows you to live through your character in your
favourite fantasy books," said Drake, sporting an airbrushed
T-shirt of himself as a "Game Master" surrounded by flying dragons
and other beasts.

For a game with a broad, international following, it had a very
modest beginning.

In 1974, 1000 brown-and-white boxes filled with pamphlets for
"Fantastic Medieval Wargames" were distributed by a couple of guys
who liked war role-playing and decided to set a game in the Middle
Ages but with monsters and fantastic heroes.

Dungeons & Dragons went on to become one of the best-selling
games of all time, inspiring fan devotion so great that some travel
thousands of kilometres to play in tournaments.

There have been Dungeons & Dragons books, movies, puzzles,
even a Saturday-morning cartoon show.

The game peaked in the 1980s, but there are plenty of fans left.
Some four million people play D&D regularly. Many of them laugh
at a common suggestion that fantasy gamers are geeks: Of course
they are, they say.

"I think a lot of people who get drawn to this game are loners,
but here's a real opportunity to come out of that shell and feel
safe about it," said fan Mitch Hamburger, 32.

The game's influence on later computer game designers is
impossible to miss, said Dave Arneson, who created Dungeons &
Dragons with Gary Gygax and now teaches computer game design.

"It influences all the video game designers," Arneson said.
"They were geeks just like we were geeks."

The popularity of the Harry Potter books and the Lord of the
Rings movies is bringing young new fans to the game, said Ryan.
Dungeons & Dragons makers released a new starter set game this
year as a result.

Game designers had worried that the intense devotion of longtime
D&D fans - and the accompanying lingo and even costumes - would
turn off new players who felt the game was too confusing to
learn.

But the young fans, and the continuing popularity of fantasy
books and movies, will keep Dungeons & Dragons alive, Drake
said.

"It's definitely a family game now, where you have people
teaching their kids the game and keeping it going," he said. "It's
just going to get bigger and bigger. It's basically the new cowboys
and Indians game. With wolves."